lmaoo.. You know ***** about boxing. He fought baldomir instead of margarito. Not de la hoya.

"in the mid-2000's, floyd mayweather, jr. Was just arriving at the top of boxing. He was undefeated, had won a share of the welterweight title and had attractive fights all around him.

One that was often mentioned at the time, but never came to pass, was a bout with then-wbo welterweight champion antonio margarito.

Margarito presented, in many eyes, a lethal challenge to floyd's dominance. He fought a similar style to jose luis castillo, who had twice given mayweather rough fights and was in the prime of his career.

Antonio margarito circa 2005-2006 was a punching machine with tremendous strength. But the fight never came off despite a then record-high payday offer to mayweather, who instead elected to face carlos baldomir for the wbc title." bleacher report

Bob Arum, Mayweather’s promoter at the time said that Mayweather preferred to await the outcome of the May 6 Oscar De La Hoya-Ricardo Mayorga fight instead of committing to Margarito because he would prefer to fight De La Hoya.

Arum stated that Mayweather would have fought Margarito for the 8 million, but he wanted a guaranteed 10 million to fight Miguel Cotto and Ricky Hatton. Arum only guaranteed him 7 million. And for those who don’t know Cotto and Hatton were at the Mayweather-Gatti fight and Cotto was ranked number 5 by the ring at the time (Proof: Listen to the commentary Jim Lampley at the end of round 5) . Cotto had just moved up to the 140 pound weight class and he didn’t make an offer to fight Mayweather after the Gatti fight.

Arum said Mayweather also asked for $20 million to fight De La Hoya, a fight Arum said he wasn’t interested in participating in. “That’s not in the cards,” Arum said. “He wants $20 million for the De La Hoya fight? It’s not there. Sometimes, my man, you gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. We’ll talk about things down the road.” Notice this part Arum was talking.

Source for the entire article: (Mayweather turns down 8 million to fight Margarito; author: Dan Rafael, it was updated on April 12th 2006)

Face time: Mayweather had nothing to gain from fighting Margarito financially. There was no reward for this. There might have been a risk (but I can’t say what would have happened because it didn’t happen). Mayweather went on to fight the Carlos Baldomir for a dollar more 8,000,001, but he was the lineal welterweight champ. But Oscar had both risk and reward and we saw the results. Several people have fought and beat Margarito and their careers haven’t gone anywhere (Paul Williams, Shane Mosley). If anyone can provide me with a web sight, newspaper clipping, anything that has facts on it, I’m open to it. Peace.

Mayweather had nothing to gain from fighting Margarito BUT he does for fighting Baldomir? I'm pretty sure Mayweather/Margarito might have generated more than 325,000 pay-per-view buys. You can't deny that.

And i know Baldomir was the lineal champion, but Margarito WAS the threat @147.